“Frontex suspends operations in Greece: it has violated EU law by participating in pushbacks”

The compliance with the European law of Frontex, the agency ofEuropean Union for land and sea border surveillance, is further discredited by a legal team of two Ong, Front-Lex e Legal Centre Lesvos, respectively Dutch and Greek.
The lawyers Iftach Cohen, Omer Shatz e Anastasia Ntailiani today presented a preliminary request for the conclusion of the activity of Frontex in Greece to the Director General of the Agency, Fabrice Leggeri (photo).

Since 2006 Frontex is active in Greece and in March 2020, at the request of Athens, launched a further intervention in the sea Aegean thanks to its power to coordinate and finance the active participation of other EU member states under its umbrella. There Greece in March of last year he requested the intervention of Frontex a few days after the announcement of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to open Turkish borders and allow migrants on their soil to reach theEurope by sea and by land. In the same days Athens had also suspended the right of asylum violating the European law. Since then numerous rejections collectives by sea by the Greece, sometimes with the active help of Frontex, have been widely reported in the international media, especially in October last year by the influential German weekly The mirror. The German newspaper had reconstructed that in some cases the ships of Frontex had witnessed pushbacks (push back) which constitute a violation of international law and European. Iftach Cohen, one of the lawyers of the NGO Front-Lex, which today presented the preliminary request to suspend the operations of Frontex in Greece explains in preview to an Italian media why and the purpose of this legal action.
“Frontex has two duties towards migrants and gods applicants asylum: must not participate in rejections and actions that violate human rights enshrined in international and European law as it apparently did in Greece on several occasions. It must also ensure by all means that such violations are not taking place during its activity “.

According to the regulation of Frontex, if during missions there are human rights violations related to the activity ofEuropean Agency, the general manager, for years Fabrice Leggeri, must suspend or terminate the mission. This procedure was activated in Hungary a month and a half ago from Lightweight, but only after having taken note of the pronunciation of European Court of Justice because of the repeated violations in the years of human rights along the Hungarian borders.

“In Hungary systematic human rights violations have been recorded since 2016 during operations Frontex and, despite the requests sent to Lightweight by the human rights department of the same Agency, the general manager himself refused to suspend them. Now we ask Lightweight to immediately suspend the activity in Aegean Sea in line with its obligation under the regulation of Frontex. With our request we want to prevent that Lightweight you continue to avoid making this decision and making your own responsibility in time before what has happened for years in Hungary “.

If Leggeri does not respond to this request, the lawyers of the Ong will contact the European Court of Justice. in the meantime Lightweight is officially under investigation by Olaf, the European Anti-Fraud Office, which three months ago had his office searched. Her resignation they have been requested for months by numerous MEPs. The MEP Sira Rego he stated that “it is very important that NGOs Front-Lex e Lesvos legal centre have threatened Frontex that will bring you in front of the court if it does not conclude its missions in the Aegean Sea for the violations of human rights committed as established by the regulations of Frontex itself ”. Frontex costsEuropean Union 460 million euros per year.

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